aibu regarding icebreakers

[ovaryhill]

When you've to stand up and tell a bunch of strangers all about yourself and your background, oh and and tell a funny fact about yourself on a training course
Would I be unreasonable to say 'it's none of your bloody business, '?

And as for group hugging and giving each other a round of applause everytime someone has spoken really is it necessary

They are hard to manage

In my experience it has been older men society conditioning really do play out

i like icebreakers

i always lie

I have been thinking about dominance and leadership a lot. Some musings:

• leadership is usually talked about as a necessarily positive quality. Why? not all situations need leaders. you rarely need more than one. why is this quality - a sense of entitlement in bossing people around - considered to be so good?

• in particular, why is it considered to be so good in and of itself and entirely divorced from the content of what any given "leader" is encouraging everyone else to do? The personality type of enjoying ordering people around has no particular connection with the skills or judgement required to make good decisions about what people should be doing. I think we should be tougher on "leadership" qualities and stop talking about "natural leaders" as if they deserve to tell us what to do (because they enjoy it) and apply harsh analysis to the content of what they are telling us to do.

I have been thinking about this a lot because I just got made redundant from a job where 1 in 4 of us were let go because our leader didn't know his arse from his elbow and bit off far more than he could chew. he talked a lot about NLP, about persuading and infuencing, and so on, and it became apparent over time that persuasion of individuals in management settings has very little to do with cold hard success of your business in the market place.

Following this redundancy, I was placed with a careers consultant who is very into his people types and I have been thinking a lot about types of people and who I am. Realising that I am not a natural leader is something I am very comfortable with

I'll be able to update on Monday as to whether I had to do anything ridiculous and whether I have the courage to refuse!

The idea is that if we 'made' you talk once, with all the feelings, the next time you talk won't be so bad.

I disagree.
People hate being put on the spot and are much more likely to join in with conversations at their own time and pace - when they feel like it.
I'm one of those quiet people that hate icebreakers. They don't make me want to join in more and I NEVER remember anybody's names or where they're from.
The introductory ice breakers make the quiet ones MORE on edge.

I have been a facilitator for years and don't do ice-breakers. Starting a workshop or training session on a nervy-footing is not an objective of mine and definitely not of the delegates either!

Group work/feedback/peer support (I am an internal trainer) are consistently regarded as worthwhile tasks in my training. I see my role as gaining information from others - ask don't tell - if people don't want to share I don't ask them to.

Interestingly often the very quiet ones are those that mark me the highest!

parking I think you are very very like me. I often feel like a fish out of water in my office and with my team ... am a good facilitator but pretty introverted otherwise. I think leadership is a set of behaviours that we all can display. I see it as modelling the ideal behavioural and attitudinal aspects of our jobs. Unfortunately its been hijacked as a skillset for senior managers only where I work. Shame.

If facilitators (not simply trainers) are doing their job properly the learning should be a natural and organic process! No touchy-feely crap - utterly and hopelessly irrelevant and a terrible way to engage people.

I had one once in a work conference:

'How did you get your name?'

Me: "My mother turned to the woman in the maternity ward next to her and asked her what her baby was called, and gave me the same name"

Absolutely true, and the group were stunned in to silence

I have been a facilitator for years and don't do ice-breakers. Starting a workshop or training session on a nervy-footing is not an objective of mine and definitely not of the delegates either!

Exactly meoryou,
Why start a training session on a nervy footing?
It's a pity you can't train all the other trainers!

ps I bet your're training sessions are always fully-booked and the feedback is good.

thanks my for your timely and constructive feedback

I generally score well on rapport, pace of delivery and dissemination of info .. but my line manager says I shouldn't pay too much attention to happy sheets (wonder why?)...

Something else funny ...I try to use as few slides as possible, however those who are two pay grades higher and who should technically know better, will typically have 70-90 for a 1-day Organisational Change workshop!!
Boke.

Pleased to be of help!
It's nice to hear of a facilitator who has some common sense

On another topic, regarding icebreaker introductions:-

^If I were a teacher, I would want to start my lesson/session by getting everybody to be as relaxed as possible.
Surely that makes more sense?
People can't absorb information if they're fearful.^

So why get people to do introductions, when it makes people more tense, instead of relaxed.
Relaxed people learn (absorb) more.

Loving how several of the trainers in this thread are trying to justify how great and worthwhile icebreakers are and I yet I dont think I've read a reply or encountered in real life one person who has said they like doing them or that it has benefited them.

Think the trainers need to look at their own practice and regardless if doing an ice breaker shows the trainer some magical revelation of the subjects personality (based on a few sentences in an false environment) if all the participants are saying that that part of your course is not good for them, then its time to listen and change your practice.

Straycatblue, I so agree with you.
Some trainers are trying to changed things.

meoryou is one example.

the type of people who become trainers are clearly the same type of people who enjoy icebreakers

the rest of us clearly don't enjoy them - which is why we have real jobs and just want to be left alone to get on with them rather

Ice breakers should be relevant to the actual focus of the training not just delivered for the sake of it. On that basis I've enjoyed some and loathed others.
If I used a pointless one I'd expect to be told so in the feedback but I'd aim not to do that. I don't use one if it adds nothing to the training.
Dome of is are trainers in addition to our core roles. I resent the implication that trainers don't have "real jobs".

"Some of us"... Sorry.

Next time I go on a course, I'm taking a copy of this with me to hold up during the icebreaker

Why would you need to without even knowing if there's going to be an icebreaker at all, let alone the form it will take?

Oh god. I loathe with 'lets go round the room and tell me something interesting about yourself'. As to getting to know who is trouble, who will be quiet: People are running these courses, presumably for some time yet cant look at body language / opening intro gambits and suss out the extroverts from the quiet ones at the registration where you sign in and get your coffee? It might be a strategy i developed to survive contracting but I can tell in 5mins who is loud, who will dominate, who will retreat, who will stir. Its not rocket science: you observe, then adapt behaviour and/or your strategy to suit that situation & those personalities present. Alert observation tells you a heck of a lot about people & group dynamics.

I also think its unfair to quieter people to put them on the spot like that, itsn precisely the kind of group activity /being put under the microscope task that will make them squirm and ensure they retreat for the rest of the session.

At my last place of work we had to do all sorts of embarrassing shit.
I usually said my bit really fast with a really dry horrible feeling in my throat.
And if I said something and then they ask a question, I'm thinking "Nooooo! move on. I've done my bit. leave me alone" and I was always way too stressed to listen to a word anyone said.

At my new place the trainers just get with the course. Hooray!

PS. It was on here that a mumsnetter a while back said i stand up and tell them my interesting fact is that once a month my uterus sloughs off. Her company stopped doing that particular activity during training shortly afterward. Its good to share!

*get on with the course. see I'm stressed just thinking about it

It seems to me that most (not all) of the trainers aren't interested in how uncomfortable/downright stressful for some people doing icebreakers is, as long as the trainers needs are met.

Consider this thread as feedback and ask yourself, why do you as a trainer insist on doing an exercise that causes discomfort and anxiety for the majority of people?
Take a step back, dont get all upset, think about it logically and change your practice.